Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 61, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 March 1920 — ALASKA OFFERS ITS PULP [ARTICLE]

ALASKA OFFERS ITS PULP

Forests Could Relieve Shortage, Says Governor Riggs. X Billions of Feet of Paper Wood Available for Manufacture Into Newsprint —-— Seattle.—Alaska wants to throw open her millions of acres of national forests sd that the billions of feet of paper wood of the nofthland can help relieve the pulp and newsprint famine, Gov. Thomas Riggs, Jr., of Alaska de-clared-here recently. Governor Riggs was here on his way from Juneau, capital of Alaska, to Washington, where he expected to help press pending legislation intended to remove restrictions and allow pulp manufacturers to go into the Tongass and Chugach reservations, the northern Wo great reserves. Pulp and piper men are anxious to go to Alaska and establish mills as great as these operated in British

Columbia not far south of the Alaska boundary line, the governor asserted. Under the present laws the pulp makers cannot enter the reservations with any certainty that they will be allowed to stay. ’ J, / Alaska’s great forests stretch over approximately 34,000 square toiles, an area nearly equal in size to the state of Indiana, according to estimates made by government officials. Several hundred million feet of good pulp wood, including western yellow pine, hemlock, Sitka spruce, white fir and lodgepole pine, are on the forest reserves alone. The Tongass reserve, in southeastern Alaska, Is especially adapted to the manufacture of pulp and paper, forestry officials have reported. There Is plenty of water power, ocean horbors open the year around, timber skirting the water and weather similar to that of the Puget sound. The governor Intends to ask Washington to restore the reserves to the national domain or to open them to the pulp industry.